The U.S. Army has pulled its advertising campaign featuring Jonathan Majors after the Creed IIII actor’s arrest on Saturday for an alleged assault.
Source: Allen J. Schaben / Getty
Both “Be All You Can Be” commercials featuring the actor as an on-screen narrator were pulled on Sunday, according to reports from Variety. Still, the U.S. Army plans to continue running other ads in the campaign, maintaining a digital presence as well as a prominent position in broadcasts of the NCAA March Madness tournament. Advertisements featuring Jonathan Majors were still running during the NCAA broadcasts as late as Saturday evening.
“The U.S. Army is aware of the arrest of Jonathan Majors and we are deeply concerned by the allegations surrounding his arrest,” Army Enterprise Marketing Office public affairs chief Laura DeFrancisco confirmed to Variety in a statement. “We recently released two ads in which Mr. Majors appears. While Mr. Majors is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete.”
The “Be All You Can Be” campaign was widely seen as a renewed effort for the U.S. Army to rebound after its worst recruiting year in recent history. In 2022, the organization enlisted approximately 45,000 individuals, falling 25% short of its goals. Centering the ad campaign around a celebrity like Majors reflected an effort to renew enthusiasm for the military among young Americans.
Jonathan Majors was arrested on Saturday in New York on domestic violence allegations following a dispute with a 30-year old woman. She was taken to the hospital with “minor injuries to her head and neck,” according to authorities.
On Sunday, just hours after news of the alleged assault broke, an attorney for the actor claimed that the woman has recanted her allegations in writing. Majors’ attorney, Priya Chaudhry, told the Los Angeles Times that her team has obtained “two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations.”
Chaudhry maintains that her client “is completely innocent and provably the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows.” In a statement released shortly after the arrest, Chaudhry claimed that the woman “was having an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to the hospital” and that Majors “did not assault her whatsoever.”
